Perhaps I was just used to playing a campaign of Undaunted with a friend which meant I had adapted to their tactics and strategies but I felt that this offered a whole new set of challenges and puzzles for me to solve. Undaunted: North Africa is a terrific evolution of an already terrific system. Both North Africa and Normandy would be great choices if you’re looking for a tight, tense two-player game that lasts about 45 minutes. If you’ve already played Normandy, North Africa has enough of its own thing going on for it to be well worth the additional investment. If you’ve never played either, I would suggest going with whichever setting appeals to you more. Anthony Howgego and Filip Hartelius (Osprey's game development team) were responsible for transforming David Digby's design concepts into an elegant card system. The end result is the "Enemy Unknown" system of playing Undaunted solitaire, a system that when combined with Normandy and North Africa allows you to play either faction in 31 different scenarios for 62 total different solo play experiences! But generally speaking, it’s driven by a system where you take a set of cards that are specific to the units in the scenario – so if you’re playing scenario four in Undaunted: Normandy, you’re going to go find the AI for each individual unit for scenario four. In most scenarios, scouts are trying to do basically the same thing, so the scout AI card might be the same for scenarios four through nine, for example. This is the sequel to last year’s Undaunted: Normandy, which featured similar card-based tactical combat between American & German soldiers across various battles during Operation Overlord. Something that’s worth highlighting straight away is that, while Undaunted: North Africa uses the same system as Normandy, it’s actually a noticeably different game, especially in terms of the level of action it portrays.I have to say I was looking forward to playing something of Undaunted: Normandy’s scale and design set in North Africa, so finding out that it was actually more focused and small-scale was a tad disappointing, but not deal-breaking.

In this first picture you will see that the Italian Rifleman has a combat counter that represents that soldier on the board and then you will see his card to the left of the counter. Each of the 4 Rifleman Cards included is a picture of the same soldier. How do we know it is the same soldier, aside from the fact that the picture is the same on all 4 cards? It is found in the name of the soldier which is Benito Romano, and the fact that it appears on all 4 cards. Across the series, each player controls either Axis or Allied forces. Your specific units are represented by tokens on the board, and those tokens are controlled by cards. Each round, both players draw a hand of four cards, choosing one to discard as a bid for initiative. Highest initiative goes first, which can be a big deal depending on the state of the board. It’s almost always better to be setting the immediate terms than it is to be responding to them. For fans of the historical simulation aspect of wargames this is not going to be a good fit. To me it is a war game as it is an abstraction of tactical combat that is driven by playing cards from one’s hand. It is no different than other Card Driven Games on the market in that sense. Four player mode works by giving the third and forth players fewer cards but ultimately is a simple re-hashing of the main game, I’ve only had one opportunity to try it and it didn’t overcomplicate or elongate the scenario too much and it felt like a nice optional addition should the chance to play with four arises. Finally North Africa is more asymmetric than Undaunted: Normandy and even Stalingrad. The units you have available to you, and your objectives, vary significantly more. To me, that makes the game feel more narratively evocative than Normandy. The sides have personality and individuation. This is further helped by the fact that each token on the board is a specific individual, not an entire unit.There’s no range in Undaunted, but shots are harder to land the further away you are. Combat involves a simple D10 roll, and you have to score higher than the opposing unit’s defence value, which includes all modifiers gained from range and terrain.

David mentioned that as the LRDG (British) you often get VP for blowing up buildings. This can be done by certain units such as engineers and sabouters. In the first scenario you haveoneengineer. The need to guard and protect units becomes very important. guidare che ci permette di spostarci nelle tessere che lo consentono (alcune sono inaccessibili ai veicoli); If ever I, as the Italians, managed to scrape a narrow victory, I would delight in the history I had just changed. My wife would celebrate her victories with the joy of knowing, she had just edged the Allies one step closer to victory and ending the war. Of course, we hadn’t. We had sat late into the night in our kitchen, playing board games; again! But the way this game pulls you in, was for me like no other. The tough thing here is, well, one play didn’t get us to tinker with vehicles yet. So I know there’s something more to talk about in this one – which will inevitably end up being covered in a review of the game – but it takes away a potential talking point here from first impressions. And that’s fine, the first scenario eases new players in and shows Undaunted veterans some of the differences between this game and the previous Normandy title. Let’s just say it feels as different already, like going from playing Commands & Colors: Ancients to playing Napoleonics. It looks and feels the same but at the same time, it feels like so much more has been added and integrated to enhance the core system. The vehicles are a shrewd addition to the gameplay, giving the encounters and environments of North Africa a distinct feel versus Normandy’s solely squad-based tactics without adding any extra heft or headaches to the rules. The increased troop variety on both sides means that unit types now consist of a single unified squad, plus a separate squad type for the Italians’ tank crew, rather than up to three squads for the same unit type as in Normandy. As a result, units feel far more distinct and there’s greater tactical consideration in how each unit’s unique abilities are utilised, whether it’s the sniper’s ability to move outside of scouted tiles, the engineer’s use in repairing damaged vehicles or the saboteur’s power to blow up the newly-added building tiles.Much like its predecessor, Undaunted: North Africa presents us with the tight gameplay and meaningful strategic decisions that make conflict fun and accessible. If you’re looking for a war game that lets you make real decisions in less than 40 minutes, then there’s nowhere better to start. There’s two main ways to do war on the tabletop. Many like to attempt a simulation. Hundreds of tokens or miniatures, rules for every part of the conflict from reloading to morale, and a sense of a complete machine being turned by your hand. The other is abstraction, focusing on the broad strokes and, in truth, getting to the most meaningful parts of conflict. One of the major changes in the game is the scale. In North Africa, each of the combat counters that are on the board represent a single soldier, rather than a unit of soldiers. This means that each card you play is just one man. Compare this to Normandy where each of the combat counters represented different soldiers in a squad. This principle can best be illustrated by taking a look at the following two pictures. I’ve enjoyed Undaunted: North Africa – it’s light enough that even non-wargamers like my wife was able to understand how things worked and I daresay she even enjoyed herself. There are some real meaty tactical decisions in terms of how you utilise your hand and how you approach your objective. Never underestimate the die-roll – I lost the first scenario within a couple of turns because my wife just went from one objective to another and demolished each building with the first throw before I could get my forces in place to stop her.

Undaunted: Reinforcements really brings the design for Normandy and North Africa to conclusion. It allows us to give players what they've been asking for from the first days of Normandy 's release. From the both of us, as well as Dávid Turczi, David Digby, and the entire Osprey team, we hope you all are as excited to play Reinforcements as we are! I think if you know what’s happened in Wargaming in the last 15 to 20 years – with the transition to card-driven games and COIN games that have euro inspirations – that sort of paved the way for a wargaming community that would be accepting of a light crossover game like this. And just from the general trend of games, it’s very difficult to categorise many games at this point as a eurogame, or an ameritrash game, or wargame. The hybridization of games has absolutely helped us. It straddles all the camps; the communities on both sides are primed for this kind of game already. Fail to find one and that unit is removed from the game. Interestingly, given the nature of scenarios, we had several missions in our playthrough with no casualties, where both sides focussed on the objectives and this seems counter to other war games I’ve played but thematically fit perfectly. So, Is This Expansion For You? Since it only carries a value of ‘1’ however, you’re not going to win that bid. Best case scenario is that your opponent also chooses to get rid of a Fog of War card and so it’s a tie. When initiative is tied, the player who currently has initiative keeps it. But if you don’t have initiative, what do you? Keep your good cards so you can make your turn more powerful? Spend a good card so you can go first?

Andrew takes an Ansaldo-Fiat M13/40 out for a joyride in this Meeple Mountain review of Undaunted: North Africa. Perhaps even more so than Normandy, North Africa’s ultra-polished gameplay makes it a great game; the immersive, careful details on top make it an exceptional experience. The new scenarios and units offer some new variability and options for two player games, with the ability to add on to existing campaigns which is particularly helpful for me as my last campaign of North Africa ended in a stalemate and this gives the perfect opportunity to determine the overall winner.